Analysis of Turkey’s position in perspective of science and technology via alternative classification techniques

In this study, the position of Turkey within 60 countries was examined with six variables associated with the perspective of the science and technology in the 2014 period of the World Values Survey (WVS). For this purpose, different Clustering Analysis techniques and Multidimensional Scaling analysis were used. Since outliers were detected in the data set, it was obtained more homogeneous clusters compared to the K-Means method by applying Robust Clustering Analysis. With Multidimensional Scaling, graphical dimensions of the locations of the countries were obtained and Clustering Analysis results were supported.. As a result, when the clusters obtained with different approaches are compared, it is observed that similar country profiles are in the same cluster. When Ward, K-means and trimmed k-means clusters examined, it has been observed that Turkey has similarities with particularly Islamic countries, Egypt, Pakistan, and Kuwait. Besides the Islamic countries, Turkey has similarities with former Soviet countries, Armenia, Russia and Ukraine. According to the cluster structures obtained from each method, Turkey has similar perspective most with former Soviet countries